


Ai no Uta; Namida ga Afureta

by Sprinkledgalaxies



Category: Pikmin (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, I listened to the official japanese songs, and cried for a thousand years because damnit, but also a lot of the love, olimar and the pikmin love each other so much and it kills me, olimar dadding the pikmin, so here im sharing the pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27708859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sprinkledgalaxies/pseuds/Sprinkledgalaxies
Summary: How do you convey the words to someone that’s done so much for you? Olimar is certain that he owes everything to the pikmin, but the pikmin are sure they owe it all to him. And maybe there are more ways than one to say I love you... (Inspired by the official songs)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27





	Ai no Uta; Namida ga Afureta

**Pulled out again, we’ll follow you alone…**

The red one sat, shaking his head to rid himself of the remaining dirt clinging to his skin. His beady eyes blinked at the strange creature that appeared as startled and intrigued as he was. His eyes trailed up, sighting the bizarre stem atop its head, that glowed with a brilliant red light.

With an almost ingrained instinct, the red one scurried forward to his leader, and awaited direction. The leader blinked and bent down to examine him. The red one didn’t flinch as the leader touched his own stem, slightly fuzzy, with a pale green fading up to a silky leaf.

The sound of his first call, his command had the red one march towards a flower he somehow recognized, and a task he somehow knew how to do as he dragged its pellet to his pod.

Now there were two of them.

Now three, and soon a solid ten.

They gathered, the leader of them smiling at them and speaking a language they didn’t understand.

_“Ol-i-mar…”_

_“Pik-min...”_

They smiled smiles that couldn’t be seen and crowded their renewed hope for a reborn civilization.

**Today once again we’ll carry, fight, multiply and be consumed…**

Twenty stood in line behind their leader now, obeying every sound of the strange metal thing around his neck. They didn’t know what it was but they knew the sound. They knew what they were supposed to do as they charged once more at their foe.

A menagerie of colors swarmed the bulborb and hit with all their might from the force of their leaves, pounding after pounding. The original red pikmin found himself tossed off, slamming into their leader.

The two watched in heartache as the hungry jowls ate his little siblings, and crunches cut off the screams of the fallen. Both squinted their eyes for a moment before their leader hastily whistled the remaining fifteen away, as five solemnly carried the carcass of the monster.

**Left alone again, we’ll meet again and be thrown around again…**

The red pikmin glanced up at their leader, but he tore his eyes away. There was a look on his face, one of pain that resonated with the pikmin, but their leader only marched faster to their seed pods.

A pikmin broke away from the group as he scratched at the grass absently, its siblings watching as a golden blob leaked out of the ground and they drank it. Their leader watched, stunned as its tiny bud bloomed into a glorious flower. Stroking its petals with an endearing, childlike wonder, the pikmin jumped up and down with a squeal. And their leader smiled.

**But we’ll follow you forever…**

There were thirty.

The pikmin never knew what they were gathering, these shiny hunks of metal, but they never questioned it. It’s what their leader wanted, and they’d do it for him, always.

Bruised, leaves torn, and three down, the pikmin stumbled down a ledge with the glass apparatus they didn’t understand, but the smile on their leader’s face made something in them light up even through the pain in their bodies. Even through their fallen comrades, they still felt that spark of unspoken love and pride.

“You did so well.” His smile was kind and it made their buds want to flourish into flowers, even as he brushed his fingers along a wound on a yellow pikmin’s side. “I have medical salve, it’ll clear that burn up.”

They didn’t understand his words, but they didn’t need to.

**I guess it’s time to play…**

There were forty.

Two extra metal things had been recovered. It was a successful morning and one that had several excited pikmin stumbling about a clearing they had made in the forest, free of predators and free of danger. Pikmin darted about the flowers, poking in and out of the petals as they chased each other.

**Maybe we’ll go out quietly…**

“Me?” Their leader made a noise that sounded like a laugh as nervous eyes gazed at the tiny hand an eager blue pikmin offered to him. “Well I don’t know about that…” He took one of their hands in his own, being led into a spring. Sunlight sparkled off the surface.

They waded in the shallow pool, and their leader’s unsure steps became more confident. A mischievous blue pikmin splashed him and he yelped with a surprised laugh. It was only a moment before he returned it, knocking back the squeaking creature . A giggling pikmin tackled him backwards, the group falling back into the spring. Laughter filled the air.

**Ah...ah falling in love…**

Their worries diminished for that moment, the world seemingly condensing itself to that single spring, that single day, that single second…

**Under that sky…**

There were fifty.

The pikmin had no concept of time, their prime focus of life being to survive, multiply, and thrive. Their leader seemed to feel differently. With everyday he grew more tense, the blasts of his whistles seeming to be sharper, and more frantic.

They approached the bulbear, their leader had called it. They didn’t know what it meant, but they knew that they had to kill it, and retrieve the part. The part that they didn’t understand, but that they knew their leader needed.

**On this planet, where so many different lifeforms live…**

There were sixty.

Dusk was beginning to approach, and the day saw failure. Pain. Their leader had limped back to the seed pods. His leg was dragging and his suit was torn. He was covered in dirt and a strange crimson liquid leaked from the areas he was holding.

The pikmin all followed quietly, the air free of their usual chatter and exuberant squeaks. They did their tasks, dragging back fallen snitch bugs and pellets. A part was recovered but their leader was in far too much pain to seem happy.

**Today once again we’ll carry, fight, multiply, and then be consumed…**

He sat on the ground, favoring an arm. They had just defeated the puffstool but to the pikmin it didn’t feel like a victory.

The red one seemed to lag behind, and as his worried gaze caught their leader’s, he felt his insides quiver with guilt. He remembered his mind fogging, he remembered the sickly fungus that overtook him like a mind altering parasite. And then he remembered losing control, the last thing he saw was the shocked eyes staring back at him as he leaped.

He was too afraid to come forward but there was no anger from the other, and for reasons the pikmin would never understand, their leader smiled gently, even as he cleaned some of the red liquid on him with a wince.

“It’s alright...I know it wasn’t your fault.”

**Uprooted we’ll gather and be thrown…**

Determination had the pikmin rise from their leader’s side, and they felt the same fire from the one that commanded them forward, the stone gates they’d destroyed crumbled at their feet. The grassy ring was before them all, and so was victory.

The pikmin charged, avoiding the rolling rocks with precision and attaching to the fleshy back end of the armored canon beetle. They pounded with all their might, feeling the cartilage of its body breaking beneath them. The next metal object fell, and they heard their leader give a cry of joy as he leaped into the air. They cheered as well.

**But we won’t ask you to love us…**

There were seventy.

Their leader had something that looked to be a list. He was chequing off the metal objects the pikmin had recovered when the red pikmin scurried over in front of him. He looked up with a smile.

The red pikmin’s eyes crinkled with excitement, and adoration. Love shone in his normally blank looking gaze. Chitters came from him as he raised his little hands, performing a series of gestures.

Their leader blinked in confusion but after a moment he chittered back, looking amused as he waved his arms. The pikmin’s leaf drooped, and a look of confusion crossed their leader’s face.

A love that could never be communicated…

**I guess it’s time to play…**

There were eighty.

It was approaching nearly a month. The air was changing, temperature cooling as the greenery around them turned into brilliant shades of red, orange, and gold. The leaves from the trees above, fell delicately to the ground below.

Their leader gazed to the sky in wonderment and the pikmin’s eyes followed. “This place is...magnificent. It’s gorgeous, despite its many threats. I need to come back, I’ll have to come back...one day.”

Five yellow pikmin broke free of their group of siblings, excitedly scooping up a leaf. Their leader smirked as it tapped the glass around his head. His hand swiped them, gently tossing them into a large pile of the colored leaves.

**Maybe we’ll try harder…**

There was only one.

The darkness that hung over them didn’t come from the black clouds above, that pelted drops of water that streamed faster than the water trailing down his leader’s face. Grief was something the red pikmin was accustomed to, but the pain was immeasurable now.

His head was in his hands, gloves clenching the strange dome around his head as a heavy breath left his chest and came in spasms. “I should have planned better...I should have researched more! I should have...could have…” But there was nothing that could be done to save them. 

The smoky prog had torn through, leaving behind its poisonous sludge that the rain had only begun to wash away.

He tried.

He fought.

He struggled to keep them alive, allowing his own skin to corrode under his gloves, but it was useless. They melted, his sprouts melted, his team, the onion diminishing in numbers until death was all that was left.

The red pikmin wandered silently to his side. He didn’t know what to do, he only knew his leader was hurting, and he was hurting. So he crawled into his lap and they hurt together.

**Ah….ah… falling in love…**

They were back up to fifty now. The little red pikmin never questioned how their leader had managed so flawlessly, but he had a new determination after their near extinction. And soon he was crowded once more by eager siblings as they fought and explored their way through the planet.

Time was almost up, but the pikmin didn’t know it. They just knew their leader was happier and that made them happy. Sounds came from him, but it didn’t sound like his usual strange language. It sounded similar to the whistling noise from his metal thing, but carried a tempo. They chittered and tried to copy.

**Under that sky…**

He grinned as he looked back at them. “You all trying to sing? Well I’m not too good of a singer, but...my kids always enjoyed it when they were young. You do this…” His lips pursed and he repeated the noise. The pikmin tried again to copy, sounding more confident this time.

Pride was in his eyes, ones that sparkled a feeling they couldn’t understand. But...they felt they knew it too.

**We’ll work together, fight, and be consumed…**

There were eighty.

They persevered with their revered leader. Hope grew in the pikmin…

**But we’ll follow you forever…**

There were ninety. 

The skeleton of his seed pod was almost fixed, the last pieces fitting into place. They saw his joy, but for some reason, his sadness…

**We’ll fight, be silent, and follow you…**

There were a hundred...

Goodbyes were upon them, although the pikmin didn’t know so. All they knew was they did it. They all did it. Their leader’s onion was at last fixed to absolute perfection, its strange metal surface glinting brilliantly in the twilight.

Their...leader’s onion was fixed. And a feeling shifted in them, between them all. Soft words they were unable to communicate, the language barrier between them always preventing them from voicing what needed to be said. ...So much that needed to be said.

He turned to them and his hand waved, forming a gesture they didn’t understand. Their small heads tilted in unison, mimicking the movement as best as they could.

Tiny fingers linked as the pod began to lift into the sky. They never stopped watching, until he was a mere speck of stardust.

**The tears overflowed…**

Olimar’s chest stuttered, disbelief at first all that clouded his mind. The complete inability to comprehend the magnitude of what they had accomplished. Shaking hands gripped his controls, at first not being able to believe it was real. He...they did it. He was going home. He wasn’t going to die. He was going to see his family.

_I’m going home…_

Tender, shaking fingers glided down a photo of his family, his lips turning up into a wobbling grin. He was going to see them again. He was going home. Because they did it, the pikmin…

**The tears overflowed…**

...The pikmin…

As if it had been wiped clean, the smile was gone and Olimar whirled so rapidly from his seat he almost broke the spring. The Hocotation plastered his face to the glass of the window as his eyes scanned below him. The planet was becoming smaller, blanketed in the fall of sunset. And yet...they were there.

**And I didn’t say that I loved you…**

They were there despite the encroaching danger, smudges of red. Of blue. Of yellow. Watching.

Everything disappeared behind a watery sheen. His gloves clenched at the fogged glass, the sounds escaping before he knew it. The first of the sobs broke free, joining the low humming of the ship’s engine.

**I’m sorry…**

When they began, they didn’t stop. Olimar’s chest heaved with sharply expelled breaths, releasing a month’s worth of agony. A month’s worth of forcing himself not to cry, because there was work to be done, parts to recover. There were beasts and enemies at every turn but now it was almost worse because...there were none of those things. There was nothing to distract him from the maelstrom of thoughts in his head…

**The starry sky blurred…**

There was nothing to distract him from the burning realization that he was going home. And he was leaving them.

**The starry sky blurred…**

He was leaving the pikmin, he was leaving his companions. He was leaving the sole reason that he was able to go home in the first place. That he was able to even live…

**And I didn’t say that I loved you…**

He was leaving those tiny and innocent creatures, that he helped be born into the world. He was leaving his loyal crew, his friends, his second unintended family. Those he raised, literally, from the ground. Those he mentored…

**I’m sorry…**

Or maybe they mentored him.

**I can come up with complex words…**

He was leaving those vulnerable little creatures, to a planet set to consume them with every step they took. He knew the state their civilization was in when he first crashed. He helped pull that weak, almost blackened onion, that could only manage one mere little posy.

He was leaving them to die.

**But I don’t think I can say simple ones…**

Why couldn’t he just say thank you? Why couldn’t he tell them how much they meant to him? How he’d never forget them, and how dear they were to him? Why couldn’t he just show them? Hold them, pet them, do something? Why’d he just stand there, saying nothing? Why’d he just act like….they didn’t even matter to him? _That none of it, none of what they did even mattered?_

**I let out a sigh…**

What was going to happen to them without him?

**I let out a sigh…**

What would they do without him?

**And I didn’t say that I loved you…**

Had he done enough, to teach them to be self sufficient?

**Stardust fell…**

Would they know what to do without the call of his whistle?

**Stardust fell…**

Would they persevere against the planet that wanted them dead?

**And I didn’t say that I loved you…**

Did they stand a chance...to save each other?

**I’m sorry…**

...Would they forgive him?

His breathing became sharper, becoming all the more distraught as grief overtook the joy he felt moments prior. He wept for the fallen, for those that he selfishly threw into the jaws of monsters, all to save his own skin.

**The tears overflowed…**

He wept for the days spent having to calculate his every move, for every nightmare that had him jolting upwards in a sweat—only to remember the nightmares were not in his dreams, but instead around every corner.

**The tears overflowed…**

He wept for the little creatures that somehow made it all bearable, with their sweet, off-key little voices as they copied his singing, and splashed him in a spring…

**The tears overflowed…**

He wept for his inability to speak when it mattered the most, to friends that went beyond what a friend did, and ones he possibly may never, ever see again.

**The tears overflowed…**

Olimar’s clenched hand slid down the glass window as his body slowly sunk to the floor, unable to keep supporting the weight of his own anguish. The ship engaged hyperdrive, and soon planet PNF-404 was a mere speck in the distance.

-

A shiver rippled over the Captain’s spine as he pulled the weak insulation of his suit closer. It seemed the climate of this planet had shifted drastically in his short venture home, as fluffy white flakes coated the ground they stood on.

And that’s when he heard it, their soft, and innocent little chirping noises. Olimar whirled around, and...there they stood. Four little red pikmin, who turned to him at the same time.

Although the pikmin’s gazes were always almost blank, this time there was something different. And somehow Olimar knew that the first little pikmin that took a slow step forward, was the one. He was the original red pikmin that Olimar had been with, since the very beginning. The first sprout he pulled, the final face he saw. 

_”It would seem they recognize you, Captain Olimar.”_ The monotonous voice of the ship spoke up, but Olimar didn’t hear it. All four had gone completely silent, and for a moment neither party made a single move.

**And I didn’t say that I loved you...**

**But we won’t ask you to love us…**

And then Olimar had rushed forward, with a shocking impact so intense he almost took all of them down to the snow, bowing his head until it nearly touched the frozen ground. His hug was unyielding. Tears squeezed out of his closed eyes, and...something wet was in the pikmin’s as well. Their little fists tightly clutched to him as their stems quivered from something else besides the cold.

**I’m sorry that I couldn’t say something like this…**

“I love you…”

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something based off the pikmin’s song to Olimar, and his for them, because...dear God I listened to it for the first time and wept like a lil bitch.
> 
> I used to be one of those people that thought Olimar didn’t give a damn about the pikmin and thought him to be heartless (WAIT BEFORE YOU HIT ME I WAS ONLY ON THE FIRST GAME- *is killed*)
> 
> If you enioy this, check out “Outside A Galaxy Of My Own”, a series but rn is only one thing. But it’s pikmin!


End file.
